Program Sessions

Join NSA Whistleblower Edward Snowden and ACLU Technologist Daniel Kahn Gillmor for a discussion about free software, surveillance, power, and control of the future. Preceded by a welcome address from John Sullivan, FSF executive director.

What could possibly make thousands of free software advocates, ham radio operators, researchers and physicians stand together? One obscure FCC rulemaking proposal on wireless radios. Eric Schultz, one of the leaders of the Save Wifi Initiative, discusses the details of the extreme proposals of FCC to control how you use your devices. You'll learn the history of regulators quietly locking down wireless radios and how it's unintentionally extending to a lockdown of the operating systems of devices. Finally, you'll find out some of the problems with proposed workarounds for the FCC lock down proposals.

User freedom is threatened by the growing complexity of current deployment and packaging directions. Running software (especially server/networked software) is becoming too hard for the average user, so many users are turning to the dangerous path of relying on large corporations to do their computing for them. What can GNU do to turn the tide here? Enter GNU Guix and GuixSD! This talk will walk through Guix's unique positioning to provide totally free and reproducible systems. A path will be laid out on how Guix could be used as a foundation to run and maintain computing for everyone, how you can get Guix and GuixSD running, and how to get involved in the most hacking-friendly package manager/distro duo ever!

The bad news is that educational technology has largely failed to deliver on its promise. Its focus on efficiency rather than on learning has resulted in a further reinforcement of education as a system of instruction to curricula rather than one of student-driven construction of knowledge.

The good news is that Free/Libre Software is the starting point towards a solution--not just because it tends to focus on putting powerful tools into the hands of its end-users, but also because Free/Libre Software espouses a culture of doing and sharing in a context of critique, reflection, and personal responsibility.

In this session, we will review some tangible ways in which Free/Libre Software is having and can have a positive impact on education and some things we can and should be doing better. We will then discuss strategies for advocating for Free/Libre Software in education systems both in the US and globally. The next generation of computer users are in school today. We need to ensure that the next generation is empowered to take advantage of the opportunities afforded by Free/Libre Software.

Bring your ThinkPad X60, X200 or R400 and get assistance flashing it with http://libreboot.org/, from the Libreboot maintainer and other knowledgeable people. Make sure everything is backed up first!

Other hardware is also supported. The full list can be found at http://libreboot.org/gitdocs/hcl/index.html#supported_list.

I'll discuss aspects of our behavior and jargon that stop or slow down some new users and contributors in free software, so that in outreach efforts, we can be better at bridging the gap. These include git's terrible UI, our in-person conference structures, and widespread scorn of and dismissiveness towards team sports, Top 40 music, patriotism, religion, small talk, and Microsoft Windows. In getting rid of unnecessary barriers, we need to watch out for disrespectful oversimplification, so I'll outline ways you can know if one of our weirdnesses is necessary. And I'll talk about how to mitigate the effects of an inessential weirdness in your outreach efforts.

Our movement rarely talks about freedom with much philosophical nuance. In this talk, I'll try to put some flesh on the bones of freedom by giving an introduction to Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum's capability approach, and applying it to software. The capability approach (sometimes called the human development approach) is a framework for thinking about human freedom that, since its development in the early 90s, has been applied across a broad range of philosophical, economic, and policy problems. Focused on what options a person has to reach their goals, it is well-suited for understanding where we succeed - and fail! - at actually freeing people.

Talk attendees should come away with a more nuanced understanding of software freedom, how to talk about it with others, and where to focus their coding energy to best increase human freedom.

The MAME Project's main stated goal is to preserve historical computer hardware. The strategy for achieving that objective is to inspect the devices and then develop emulators for them. While most hardware is undocumented and relies on proprietary firmware, the MAME development community has nurtured strong reverse engineering practices since its origins back in 1997.

The techniques that we need to master in order to develop new emulators include reverse engineering procedures that are also very useful for aiding in the creation of free firmware solutions to replace the non-free blobs used in a broad variety of daily-use devices. These skills are also useful for the development of free drivers for undocumented devices and in the porting of operating systems and BIOSes to new hardware platforms. We need to strengthen a community of skillful hardware reverse engineers so that we can solve the freedom issues denounced by projects such as Linux-Libre and Libreboot.

Bring your ThinkPad X60, X200 or R400 and get assistance flashing it with http://libreboot.org/, from the Libreboot maintainer and other knowledgeable people. Make sure everything is backed up first!

Other hardware is also supported. The full list can be found at http://libreboot.org/gitdocs/hcl/index.html#supported_list

Copyleft has faced serious challenges in the last five years. It's not over: many more threats are on the way. Not by coincidence these attacks on copyleft come when "open source" reaches new heights of success. For example, hordes of software developers are funded full time to churn out new free software, as long as it's not copylefted. Some such code is specifically designed to replace existing, widely used, copylefted programs.

Meanwhile, programs under copyleft licenses (most notably the kernel named Linux) face a decades long, ongoing myriad of license violations. Such violations include nefarious attempts by major companies to shirk their responsibilities under copyleft. The situation is undoubtedly bleak.

Those of us who care about software freedom need a plan. Copyleft once assured an equal playing field, but big companies work daily to tilt the playing field in their favor and against the interests of most developers, hobbyists, users, and enthusiasts.

We want to share experiencies around Mexican social movements migrating to free software and/or using other free tools. People of different social processes are increasingly adopting FLOSS in their daily activity to communicate and organize. Most of the motivation came from digital security awareness but some times it goes a little further (like be congruence with the defense of human rights). In the way of facilitating those processes we have seen some advantages and disadvantages and receive some feedback we want to share with the rest of the community. Specially interesting for developers and technical facilitators who want to share their own experiences in this topics and strengthen links between FLOSS technical communities and Latin American social movements. Intend to generate some ideas for improving the linkages between both spaces not only for the software itself but emphasizing the political aspects they share and how to empower grassroots movements using free/libre tools.

Patents, copyright and trademarks are sometimes conflated, and can all limit your freedoms to control your computing and lives. For right, we have an answer - copyleft. Patents are being fought on a number of fronts, and work continues. However, trademarks can also seriously hinder progress as well.

Due to some specific clauses in the implementation of trademarks, it's hard to allow people to use the 'brand' without the potential for losing it. We need an easy and understood way of bringing the freedoms the GPL ensures to this third leg of intellectual property law.

This talk will set out the background and problems with trademark implementation, how it's being (mis)used, and thoughts for what we need in the future.

Bring your ThinkPad X60, X200 or R400 and get assistance flashing it with http://libreboot.org/, from the Libreboot maintainer and other knowledgeable people. Make sure everything is backed up first!

Other hardware is also supported. The full list can be found at http://libreboot.org/gitdocs/hcl/index.html#supported_list

The FSF High Priority Projects List guides volunteers and supporters to projects where their skills can be utilized, whether they be in coding, graphic design, writing, or activism.

Members of the committee convened to revise the list will give an update on the review process so far, including some examples of suggestions received as part of the call for public feedback, and will invite audience discussion.

This strategic action session is for anyone interested in the solidarity economy and asset-based community development. We'll compare notes, network, and outline the ecosystem of services needed to support the operations of community land trusts, worker co-operatives, sharing networks, and other democratic economic initiatives. We'll also explore how free software technology can help activists organize and manage investments, alliances, and information resources. Hopefully both hardware and software solutions will be discussed. I'll facilitate the session and am open to the "unconference" style, where the content of the session is decided by whoever shows up. I'll prepare an overview of the topic, with an emphasis on designing tactics for people without a background in technology. Security, control, and sustainability will be core concepts.

LittleSis is a free software, wiki-style database that tracks connections between the world's most powerful people and organizations. In the workshop, participants will be trained in the site's basic functions (e.g. editing profile pages and searching for interlocks between corporations) and advanced functions (e.g using the site's Oligrapher tool to create maps of information stored in the database). We will also share stories about the ways in which LittleSis and power analysis research have been used in movement and organizing contexts, including how activists in St. Louis used LittleSis to map and challenge the local corporate Powers Behind the Police and how activists in Philadelphia are using LittleSis to research the corporate entities behind education privatization. Participants will leave with an understanding of how to use LittleSis, as well as inspiration for how they can start their own movement research teams to map the powers that be in their communities.

Bring your ThinkPad X60, X200 or R400 and get assistance flashing it with http://libreboot.org/, from the Libreboot maintainer and other knowledgeable people. Make sure everything is backed up first!

Other hardware is also supported. The full list can be found at http://libreboot.org/gitdocs/hcl/index.html#supported_list

Project "De-google-ify Internet" aims at offering as many alternative services as possible to those threatening our digital freedoms. Google is not the only player there, even though it gave the project its name. Google Drive, Google Calendar, Skype, Dropbox, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Doodle, Yahoo Groups, and many others, are extremely convenient services. But they are centralized and make users dependent.

Framasoft are resisting this trend. They have come up with a several year roadmap to set up alternative services. These services are thought of as digital commons. They are free, gratis, and open to all. Framasoft is a French not-for-profit whose goal is to decentralize the Internet by promoting self-hosting. They work to empower everyone to install and run their own services. The project already offers more than 15 alternative services and welcomes about 1,000,000 visits per month.

Modern websites incorporate large amounts of third party resources. While these third parties can provide a better browsing experience all too often they abuse their inclusion on sites to be able to track information about your website's visitors. This type of non-consensual tracking must stop.

I'll cover how users can protect themselves while browsing, why some solutions are better than others, and why free software licenses have helped provide a rich ecosystem of non-proprietary tools. From Ad Block Plus, to Firefox's Tracking Protection, to the EFFs Privacy Badger extension I'll discuss how these tools work and how users can protect themselves from online surveillance.

Projects with a significant number of contributors and users will face decisions where they are no longer able to fulfill the needs and desires of all stakeholders. When this happens some people become upset. A subset of those people become so upset they vent their frustrations on Twitter. I have collected tweets that express a negative sentiment towards decisions made within free software communities and by decision makers for free software projects. These were then categorized based on the decision type (e.g. licensing) and outcome (e.g. switching licenses). I hope to create a greater community understanding of decision making processes, develop a discussion about how communities and decision makers can move forward to better balance the wants and needs of stakeholders, and make a few crass jokes that possibly violate the Code of Conduct.

Bring your ThinkPad X60, X200 or R400 and get assistance flashing it with http://libreboot.org/, from the Libreboot maintainer and other knowledgeable people. Make sure everything is backed up first!

Other hardware is also supported. The full list can be found at http://libreboot.org/gitdocs/hcl/index.html#supported_list

Following the presentation of the Free Software Awards, FSF founder Richard M. Stallman will talk about current threats and opportunities for the free software movement, such as new ideas for fixing the mobile phone situation, and the worsening problem of schools forcing nonfree software on students.

"And if it comes back to being all alone at the starting gate, so be it. We hadn't wanted this fuss, these extras. We were calm under an appearance of turmoil, and so we remain even today, an unwanted inspiration to those who come immediately after as well as those who came before, lots of them, stretching back into times of discussion. I told you so, we can handle it, hand on the stick shift headed into the billboard labeled Tomorrow, the adventures of new music, melismas shrouding the past and the passing days."

-- John Ashbery, “Episode” from Planisphere

Librarians have long been defenders of democratic ideals like free speech and privacy, not only providing access to information and technology freely, but also by fighting back against threats to civil liberties like the USA PATRIOT Act and National Security Letters. In the post-Snowden era, libraries have taken this activism further and are teaching FLOSS privacy-enhancing technologies to their patrons in free computer classes, and installing these tools on library PCs. Nima Fatemi and Alison Macrina of Library Freedom Project will talk about how LFP kickstarted this movement of radical crypto-librarians, and how FLOSS tools like Tor Browser, Signal, OTR, GPG, and Tails are being deployed and taught in libraries to an overwhelmingly positive reception. Nima and Alison will also discuss LFP's newest project, bringing Tor exit relays into libraries, what happened when the Department of Homeland Security tried to shut down that project at a small New Hampshire library – and how the local and global community fought back and won.

By sheer luck and opportunity, a group of four doctors in 2004 at a restaurant used napkins to sketch the data model of what they thought would be a simple electronic medical records system.

Fast track to today, this simple medical records system is known as OpenMRS (Open Medical Record System), a free medical records system in use in over 42 countries in the world. For example, when Google worked on the ‘Ebola tablet’ under project Buendia, OpenMRS powered it. After the national disaster in Haiti struck, OpenMRS powered the new Mirebalais hospital. Six countries committed to deploy OpenMRS as their national EMR system including Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Nigeria, Philippines and Bangladesh. OpenMRS has never hired developers for the decade of existence, yet every single day people from all over the world come to our platform and ask us how can they get involved?

This session shares a decade of running a lean organization to provide free medical records software, what has worked and what threatens our sustainability.

The presentation will describe how the Debian reproducible builds team made 85% of the Debian archive reproducible, what steps are left to reach 100% and what steps are needed beyond reproducible builds, so that every user can easily and meaningful benefit from them.

The presentation will be largely about the Debian work on the area, but it will also portray other projects work on reproducible builds, as our goal is to make reproducible builds the norm for free software: "It's not free software if it's not reproducible."

The free software movement has done well in the last few years, and has even inspired a new generation of activists advocating for software freedom. However, in a software-driven society where everything from cars, watches, and even medical devices run on non-free software, the free software community has its work cut out for it. In order to enact significant social change, we need to work with legislators, other activists, and local community leaders. Their help is crucial.

How do we connect our community to other groups? In order to gain support, the first step we must take is to engage with the public on how non-free software can affect their everyday lives negatively. Even the most non-technical person can become engaged with the social and technical benefits to free software, if given the chance. This session will discuss how each and every one of us in the free software movement can engage with others, promoting the ideals of a society running on free software in a way that each person can personally appreciate.

The first day of LibrePlanet 2016 marks the third anniversary of Register of Copyright's emphatic call for a comprehensive rewrite of the United States Copyright Act -- the first such effort since 1976. Congress has taken up the charge, holding dozens of hearings and floating multiple bills. Meanwhile, trade negotiations and extralegal agreements have changed the state of play. Where does it all stand, and what can activists looking for common sense reform do next? This session will describe recent progress and the lay of the land on copyright terms, the public domain, DRM laws, policy laundering, fair use, and more topics of immediate interest to the free software community. It will describe activism efforts underway to defend the rights of the public as legislation gets proposed. Finally, it will foolishly attempt to predict the future. Will we see a Next Great Copyright Act?

The full potential of free software is to break down the barriers to technology and to participation, and to include users and contributors from a wide range of backgrounds. There are four key steps for making communities diverse and inclusive: creating a welcoming environment, teaching skills, fostering connections, and increasing visibility of contributors from underrepresented backgrounds. Whether you are a prospective contributor wondering what an inclusive community looks like, a project contributor wanting to take concrete steps to improve your project's outreach, or a project leader looking to create a diversity strategy for your community, this talk will have the information you need. Marina will share best practices and inspiring stories from her years of experience in free software diversity outreach in roles including outreach specialist at Red Hat, co-organizer of Outreachy, advisor and director for the Ada Initiative, and outreach lead for GNOME.

Do you know Ring? It's a free software for real-time communication. Developed by Savoir-faire Linux and a community of contributors, it operates in peer-to-peer - so without a central server. Communication is tightly coupled to the sense of liberty. Ring let users keep control of their exchanges.

It allows you to make audio or video calls, and to send messages - in confidence and safely. Currently in an alpha version, Ring is even more than that! Available on GNU/Linux, Windows, Mac OSX, and Android, it can be associated with a conventional phone service, integrated with any connected device, and adapted to the specific needs of users. It is a combination of technologies and innovations opening all kinds of perspectives for everyone!

During this presentation, you will understand how Ring is built to respect privacy and how you can use it. You will also discover why it is an essential tool for the future and how Ring defends freedom.

Libreboot - free software BIOS replacement (boot firmware), based on coreboot, for laptops and servers, and x86 (Intel/AMD) and ARM hardware.

Libreboot is a free software BIOS replacement (boot firmware), based on coreboot, for Intel, AMD and ARM based systems. Backed by the Free Software Foundation, the aim of the Libreboot project is to provide individuals and companies with an escape from proprietary firmware in their computing. Libreboot is also being reviewed for entry as an official component of the GNU system.

Boot firmware is the low-level software that runs when you turn your computer on, which initializes the hardware and starts a bootloader for your operating system. Libreboot currently supports laptops and servers, on x86 (Intel and AMD) and ARM (Rockchip RK3288), with more hardware support on the horizon. The purpose of this talk is to describe the history of the project, why it started, why it's important, where it's going and, most importantly, to tell people how they can get involved.

Leah also runs the Minifree (formerly Gluglug) at https://minifree.org/, a company that sells computers with libreboot and Trisquel GNU/Linux pre-installed.

More information about libreboot can be found at https://libreboot.org/.

Your workplace can exert a lot of control over how much free software you use, what you're allowed to work on in your own time and what kinds of tools you become an expert in. New employees don't always negotiate their contracts to make sure they can continue contributing to free software and current employees aren't always successful at advocating for using free software tools, choosing free software technologies or contributing changes back upstream when they do rely on free software. We'll address what's possible, what your legal department is likely to be concerned about and how to be a smooth negotiator at work. Many companies could benefit tremendously from using FLOSS, but free software enthusiasts and institutional gatekeepers are coming from very different perspectives. Free software developers and users tend to be most familiar with free software's benefits when compared to proprietary solutions; user freedom, reusing code, public code review for bugs, increased project capacity and cost. The uninitiated may -- unfortunately -- be most familiar with the risks, some real and some perceived. Employers also benefit from having workers who are passionate about their work, are well-connected to the free software community and are constantly learning about new technologies from their peers outside the company, but new employee contracts rarely recognize this unless you ask. Conversations about contracts, choosing new technologies and sharing an employee's work with another entity are high stakes negotiations. With a solid understanding of what worries and motivates the other parties, you can become a savvy advocate for free software at work. This talk will help you gather information, frame the conversation and make the best possible case for using and contributing to free software at work.

In fiction, we have often faced our fear that man-made creatures will become smart enough to subjugate us. As technology evolves, the Singularity may seem an inevitable looming future, but such intelligent beings have actually been with us for a very long time. Over many decades, they disabled the checks intended to keep them under our control, and turned most of us into their much-needed servants, who now live in an artificial reality they created to control us, while our planet can hardly support our life much longer. These creatures grew more powerful and smarter with our technological advances, but then they sent their agents back to disable our defenses and the leaders of our resistance, turning many of our tools and much of our infrastructure against us. They vaporized our freedoms, and a dark cloud now covers most of the planet. We still have one card left up our sleeves to tame these creatures, but we need more Neos and Connors to play it successfully. Are you up for it?

Imagine a world where surveillance is the default and users must opt-in to privacy. Imagine that your every action is logged and analyzed to learn how you behave, what your interests are, and what you might do next. Imagine that, even on your fully free operating system, proprietary software is automatically downloaded and run not only without your consent, but often without your knowledge. In this world, even free software cannot be easily modified, shared, or replaced. In many cases, you might not even be in control of your own computing -- your actions and your data might be in control by a remote entity, and only they decide what you are and are not allowed to do.

This may sound dystopian, but this is the world you're living in right now. The Web today is an increasingly hostile, freedom-denying place that propagates to nearly every aspect of the average users' lives -- from their PCs to their phones, to their TVs and beyond. But before we can stand up and demand back our freedoms, we must understand what we're being robbed of, how it's being done, and what can (or can't) be done to stop it.

Lightning talks are short presentations given by conference attendees on free software topics they're passionate about. Come to talk, or just to listen to people from all corners of the free software community.

If you'd like to talk, please sign up and follow the instructions on https://libreplanet.org/wiki/LibrePlanet:Conference/2016/Lightning_Talks. Walkups will be accepted where the schedule allows.

FreedomBox is a personal server with a free software stack running the Universal OS that hosts on demand applications such as file sharing, shared calendaring, instant messaging, secure voice conference calling, blog and wiki. Unlike proprietary service platforms, FreedomBox software guarantees its users' rights, and works only for them, an indispensable attribute in the post-Snowden world.

The session demonstrates important applications of FreedomBox with the goal to engage the listeners into using, building and contributing to FreedomBox.

Shifting perspectives on the value of Free/Libre software development and Creative Commons content creation would open up opportunities for individuals working in these fields as we finally see a push towards an economy that makes sense for the Internet. This will be an overview of some platforms creating these new opportunities and ways we can think about how an economy can exist in the digital world beyond the artificial scarcity that comes with keeping code and content locked down or secret. The session should include group discussion about platforms, philosophies and experiences folks working in free/libre software and creative commons content.

Digital resources such as software programs can be easily copied and shared, but distribution is restrained by technical, legal, and cultural means. The free culture community is not the first to fight "artificial scarcity." What can we learn from other communities and movements?

This presentation will be a series of case studies covering a variety of other forms of artificial scarcity, including food waste, housing vacancy, and the destruction of excess retail merchandise. We'll focus on efforts to combat this scarcity, highlighting what's worked and drawing lessons from what hasn't.

By exploring the connections between free culture and other anti-scarcity movements, we'll find new approaches, new allies, and new opportunities to stand up for the public commons.

Lightning talks are short presentations given by conference attendees on free software topics they're passionate about. Come to talk, or just to listen to people from all corners of the free software community.

If you'd like to talk, please sign up and follow the instructions on https://libreplanet.org/wiki/LibrePlanet:Conference/2016/Lightning_Talks. Walkups will be accepted where the schedule allows.

Academic Institutions and their researchers are some of the biggest beneficiaries of free software development. While individual researchers have contributed greatly to free software, they usually do so outside of the scope of their regular jobs and to the detriment of their academic careers. At CUNY, we have taken steps to change this unacceptable situation. Please come to this session and exchange ideas and strategies for having contributions to free software valued by the University.

The surveillance state is driven by secrecy. But everything leaves a data trail and the intelligence community itself is no exception -- even the NSA is vulnerable to surveillance. Transparency Toolkit is a free software project that helps anyone investigate surveillance programs.

By making tools to help collect and analyze publicly available data like resumes, job listings, social media, and government contracts, we are using free software and open data to track and expose the surveillance state. In this talk, I'll discuss some of the interesting things we've found, how Transparency Toolkit's software works, and how people can use our tools to investigate issues they care about.

Gender and racial diversity initiatives have been an important social force in the free software movement in the last several years. These social justice campaigns have been successful: see for example PyCon. However, those further marginalized, such as transgender hackers, may not feel properly included in these initiatives. They have turned to free software as a model for their own liberation as well as a way to critique the culture of the status quo and mainstream diversity initiatives.

This talk, co-given by a trans hacker and an anthropologist, highlights how free software offers powerful models and critiques of the lack of gender diversity in the free software movement by retelling several ethnographic stories of a free software project led by and comprised of trans women.

By presenting these ethnographic stories we wish to springboard with the audience a conversation of the value of challenges from below to diversity initiatives in free software and the tech industry at large.

Blender is a versatile Free 3D animation program that is most famously used as an artist tool. However, it also has a rich, pythonic and consistent api that allows extending and controlling the application. We'll explore techniques to use this api for creating 3D meshes, that could be a foundation/ inspiration for generative architecture or art.

Familiarity with Blender is not required (but recommended) and at least a basic knowledge of Python would be helpful for this workshop.

The license compliance industry purportedly helps information technology companies and other actors to use publicly available software, and in particular free software, in a way that is compliant with the relevant free software licenses. In this talk we will review why the license compliance industry exists and discuss, from an external point of view, how it operates. We will then highlight some potential ethical issues on the current best practices for license compliance in the industry, and propose community-oriented alternatives that we can build, today, on top of the existing corpus of publicly available free software.

A look back at free software history, with a live demonstration of software from the past being used to deliver a presentation in 2016.

An 'intermediate' panel designed to provide a working overview of diversified libre media communities blended with per-project technical development updates, organizational adoption challenges, community-centric user-experience goals and other novel discussions regarding video production both generally and as it relates to conference video production (e.g., session recording and live-streaming).

Through our Defective by Design campaign, the Free Software Foundation is organizing against a proposal by Hollywood and major software companies to weave DRM (Digital Restrictions Management) into Web standards. The campaign is coming to a head this year, as the proposed restriction standards near a final decision by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

The session will start with an overview of the campaign's history. Then we'll have a collaborative brainstorming session to explore future directions for the campaign, what victory would look like, how to mobilize other groups and which media outlets we should focus on. Participants will leave the session with a sense of the FSF's campaign tactics and new opportunities for involvement in the campaign.